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M. Aurelius Antoninus, the emperor, did not hesitate to acknowledge his thankfulness to Epictetus, the slave, in his attempt to guide his life according to the principles of the Stoics.
He was just the kind of person, Peter, who, being unable to sleep, would have wandered out into a terrible thunderstorm, in the middle of the night, and, being cold and wet and clammy, Peter, would have drawn moral lessons, and made epigrams upon the thunder and lightning. Epictetus, I am quite sure, was a person!" "He was one of the wisest, gentlest, and most lovable of all the Stoics!" said I.
Parmalee was a good deal of a stoic and a little of a cynic; but he was flesh and blood, as even stoics and cynics are, and the man under sixty was not born who could have resisted that dark, bewitching, wheedling, beautiful face. The American artist took her in his long arms with a vigorous hug, and favored her with a sounding kiss. "I'll tell you, Sybilla.
It's true that the modern Roman, before the extension of the S.P.C.A. to his city, used his horse cruelly upon the perfectly unquestionable ground that the poor beast was not a Christian." "I don't remember about the Stoics exactly," the second friend mused aloud; and the first let this go, though they both understood that very likely he not only did not remember, but had never known.
It is said by our opponent that no one is ungrateful; and this is supported by the following arguments: "A benefit is that which does good; but, as you Stoics say, no one can do good to a bad man; therefore, a bad man does not receive a benefit. No honourable or commendable thing can find any place with a bad man; therefore, neither can a benefit.
The whole of life lies in these sensations; one may be oppressed by it, one may hate it, but one cannot despise it. Yes, so, I repeat, the doctrine of the Stoics can never have a future; from the beginning of time up to to-day you see continually increasing the struggle, the sensibility to pain, the capacity of responding to stimulus."
The Stoics saw what was wanting, and tried to supply it; but though they could provide a theory of action, they could not make the theory into a reality, and it is noticeable that Stoicism as a rule of life became important only when adopted by the Romans. The Catholic Church effected something in its better days when it had its courts which treated sins as crimes.
The Stoics were the philosophers who upheld the love of virtue and honour; the Epicureans said that it was of no use to vex themselves in this life, but that they might as well enjoy themselves while they had time. St.
Some of Vergil's most eloquent passages seem to be inspired by Stoic speculation. Even Horace, despite his banter about the sage, in his serious moods borrows the language of the Stoics. It was they who inspired the highest flights of declamatory eloquence in Persius and Juvenal.
But the difficulty which has already appeared in mysticism now grows more formidable. How can it be said that a being that coincides with the known laws of nature works only good? Among the Stoics the attempt was made to conceive all necessities as somehow "beneficial," as somehow good in the commonly accepted sense of the term.
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